As part of Serbia’s Presidency of the Carpathian Convention for 2023–2026, the third Carpathian Convention seminar on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) took place in Belgrade on 28 and 29 September. The seminar was organised by Serbia’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, in cooperation with the Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention and Špirála, a Slovak non-governmental network of environmental education organisations, and with support from the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth of the Republic of Cyprus.
The event brought together experts from the Carpathian region and representatives of institutions and organisations from Serbia to strengthen cooperation between members of the Carpathian Education for Sustainable Development Expert Network (CESDEN), Serbian ESD actors and relevant public institutions, through exchanging experiences and exploring opportunities for joint activities and projects. The seminar also aimed to support dialogue on inter-ministerial cooperation in Serbia, present the Carpathian ESD Roadmap towards 2030 and gather feedback on it and the further development of CESDEN. The programme also included an exchange of experiences on pastoralism and its links to sustainable development and education.
During the first panel, devoted to cross-sectoral cooperation, the Institute’s Acting Director, Professor Boris Stojkovski, presented its activities in climate and ecological literacy. These included a project assessing the climate and ecological literacy of seventh-grade students, which the Institute carried out with UNICEF’s support.
Speaking about cooperation with other educational institutions, he highlighted the Institute’s work with the Vojvodina Pedagogical Institute on the “Green Pedagogy” project, as well as existing cooperation agreements with counterpart institutions in Republika Srpska, North Macedonia and Montenegro.
Stojkovski announced the forthcoming publication of a collection of climate literacy tasks and proposed developing similar collections and translating them into the languages of the countries that are Parties to the Carpathian Convention and into English. In the context of regional cooperation, he also proposed a joint project to conduct research into climate and ecological literacy in schools across the region.
The seminar was also attended by the Institute’s Assistant Directors, Dr Elizabeta Karalić, Head of the Centre for Quality Assurance of Educational Institutions, and Danijela Đukić, Head of the Centre for International and National Assessments and Research. Through their work in previous years, both have contributed to the Institute’s cooperation with the Carpathian Convention and to projects in the field of ecology.
The Carpathian Convention is an international treaty on the protection and sustainable development of the Carpathian region, signed in 2003. Its Parties are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
